Coleridge, denouncing the “moral” consequences of Napoleon’s tyranny, as far more to be dreaded than the worst of those outward and calculable evils, which chiefly shock the imaginations of men, is out of all patience with such objections as, “What good will the Tyrolese do themselves by their heroic resistance?” “What are the Spaniards fighting for?” etc.,—as if man were made only to eat above ground, and be eaten; as if we had no dignity to preserve, no conscience to obey, no immortality to expect.
What good can it do him? demands the vulgar fine lady in “Cecil,” who hears that a certain well-to-do man of genius has written a book. A man, she argues, writes for money or distinction: what can be this man’s object? he don’t want to be made a baronet, nor does he want to increase his income. Where can be the use of writing? And where, she is (by cross-questioning) answered, can be the use to the aloe of its flower, to the mine of its gold? Oldbuck of Monkbarns might have done worse than parody, as he did, the “brutal ignorance” of your cui bono querists of the baser sort, in the strain of Gray’s Bard,—
“Weave the warp and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of wit and sense;
Dull garment of defensive proof
’Gainst all that does not gather pence.”
That a new machine, a new experiment, the discovery of a salt, or of a bone, should, in England, receive a wider homage, than the most profound speculation from which no obvious results are apprehended,—this way of contemplating affairs Mr. Buckle was prompt to own as certainly productive of great good. But he also took care to declare it to be, with equal certainty, a one-sided way, satisfying a part only of the human mind—many of the noblest intellects craving for something which it cannot supply. There are mortals who, as a clerical essayist has said, cannot understand or sympathise with the gratification arising from a study of graceful and beautiful objects; who think that the supply of animal necessities is all that any man (but themselves, perhaps) can need. What more can he want? they exclaim, if the man be well-fed, and well-dressed, and well-lodged. Why, if he had been a horse or a pig, is the answer, he would have wanted nothing more; but the possession of a rational soul brings with it pressing wants which are not of a material nature, not to be supplied by material things, and not felt by pigs and horses. And the craving for surrounding objects of grace and beauty is held to be one of these. Mr. Emerson, in his far-going way, goes so far as to say, as regards the “base rate at which the highest mental and moral gifts are held” in his country,—that let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, “and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to, is, to drown him to save his board.” M. de Tocqueville somewhere observes, that to cross almost impenetrable forests, to swim deep rivers, to encounter pestilential marshes, to sleep exposed to the damp air of the woods,—these are efforts which an American easily conceives, if a dollar is to be gained by them—that is the point; but that a man should take such journeys from curiosity, he cannot understand. The German poet is often cited for his remark, that the Cow of Isis is to some the divine symbol of knowledge, to others but the milch cow, only regarded for the pounds of butter she will yield. An English sympathiser exclaims, “O tendency of our age, to look on Isis as the milch cow! Gaze on the goddess,” he bids a sordid aspirant, “and get ready the churn and thy scales, and let us see what butter will fetch in the market.” When Judge Haliburton’s typical Yankee is asked by the old minister what he thinks of Niagara, and forthwith expatiates on the “grand spec” it offers for factory purposes—for carding mills, fulling mills, cotton mills, grain mills, saw mills, plaster mills, and never a want of water for any or all of them, his pastor upbraids him with almost sacrilege in that style of talk; exclaiming, “How that dreadful thirst of gain has absorbed all other feelings in our people, when such an idea could be entertained for a moment! It [Niagara] is a grand spectacle, it is the voice of nature in the wilderness, proclaiming to the untutored tribes there of the power and majesty and glory of God.... Talk not to me of mills, factories, and machinery, sir, nor of introducing the money-changers into the temple of the Lord.”
LIGHT AT EVENING-TIME.
Zechariah xiv. 7.